This is the second nearly flawless and super authentic GB Studio Castlevania game from this jam I've thus far played. How do you guys even do it?

First off, yes. The gameplay is very, very close to being perfect. Had this been released back then, and it does feel like it could've been, it would've been considered a feature complete, sleeper hit import. Considering that this is a jam game: wow. This is in between Castlevania Adventure and Castlevania Adventure 2 in terms of gameplay content - that's nuts! The main difference between both is regarding the subweapons, which 2 had and 1 didn't.

Which brings us to yes, the shuriken. The shuriken is a very functional throwing knife at specific points in the game, but its overall usefulness is a bit limited. For example, at least in my experience you will want to throw them on them skelly youkai liberally, but not on the final boss, you want to try for a double whip when he lands. Which is just fine, it's just that the game gives you a lot of them and you don't really use them too often. Bit of a shame, I do wish there were more situations that called for them.

Furthermore on the gameplay front, there's just some really, really slight hitbox issues with the umbrella, you can whiff quite a bit against it. Barely worth mentioning, however. Also barely worth mentioning is that there are some slight timing improvements that could be made. Such as the final boss lingering on the floor just slightly longer so you can get the double whip on 'im, the dragons that pop out of the pipes taking some extra frames to fire or you being able to whip their fireballs, that kind of thing. I mention it because this being such an amazing, basically feature complete GB game I do believe that it's very worth continuing, patching, something like that.

The presentation is really damn good. I really appreciate the eye for detail. The boss health bar charging up, the varieties of youkai, the very retro artstyle. Musically, it's really damn good as well - I especially like the half-step progression (?) in a section of the stage 1 theme, it rocks! The entire package has such a Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon vibe to it, I was smiling the entire way because I love that game.

Just beautifully done.

One of the best games here so far

Really impressive that this was made in a week, it feels very complete and smooth to play too. Great work!

Congratulations to a very polished game. I reached the skeleton boss, but that was too hard. I liked the graphics and the details. well done.

Wow, you're certainly pushing the limits of GB Studio, this is really solid. Love the yokai, love the music, gameplay is smooth. Very cool game, congrats!

What an amazing game! I love the art style. The parallax effect is very well implemented. However I think that 3 layers of parallax lower the performance a bit too much for my taste. 

The jump pads where my worst enemy I struggled a lot to time my jumps right. So, I ended up just spamming the jump button, hoping that one of the pushes would be timed correctly.

Also the final boss was very well designed 👍

If you don't mind me asking, how did you do the whip-enemy contact detection? Did you use a static invisible projectile? I was struggeling to get sword hits right in a similar game.

Also, how did you get the turtles jumping out of the water so smooth? I mean they look like they are properly affected by gravity.

Amazing job with the game. It really feels as if it could have been on the DMG 🧡

Oh my gosh this is amazing! All of the art of the yokai-- the kappa, the kasa-obake, the yurei, etc.-- are so detailed and beautiful! The soundtrack is so good too! And the gameplay... I myself am not very good at metroidvanias but I powered through this one! It was tough but it was fun!

I really enjoyed this one! Fantastic work!

This game is incredible! The fact that this was made in such a short amount of time is insane. I could see this being an official Castlevania spin-off. Great Work!

This is a very well-made Castlevania-like game. And I was surprised by how long it was, three full levels with a boss included at the end of each one! The aesthetic is superb, and the music sounds lovely. This feels really like a japanese-themed Castlevania-like that could have been released for the Game Boy. I was surprised by the variety of enemies and how you reinvented classic Castlevania enemies as yokai. And I want to highlight the epic feel of the third level. In fact, the level-by-level progression is very cool, starting at the outskirts of the manor, then exploring inside and finally jumping and slashing enemies on the rooftops!

Unfortunatly,  I experienced some lag while playing, but it was not a big deterrent to the overall experience. I also thought the platforms in the first boss fight were a little harder to see for me, I initially thought they were part of the background, and the third boss I found it a bit too long and easier than the second. Personally, I am not a big fan of bosses where you have to wait for them to repeat an attack pattern in order to have a window for attacking yourself

But overall I had a blast playing this. Amazing work here!

Wait, this masterpiece was made by a solo dev in 10 days..! What?
This is incredible! Great music, perfect artwork, excellent gameplay! And all that playing in an original gameboy... I am losing my words...
Top entry for me here!

I love the Asian mythological creatures as enemies in this game! It adds a layer of interest beyond the generic "spooky" theme. The game is great! I think with extra dev time this could turn out to be a fantastic game.

This is a pro level gameboy game I would have been astounded by in the 90s buying it at KB toys! Every perfectly rendered rooftile and tree and indoor decoration was matched by the epic soundtrack. As a Yo-kai Watch fanatic I loved seeing Kappa and them again!

this is absolutely mindblowing!!! Its hard to believe this was only made in 10 days, that's really incredible. I love the art, the choice of enemies is awesome, and I really love the bosses, especially the giant skeleton. I did play on the browser version and got some slowdown and also a bug where my hitbox got disabled, but I'm definitely gonna try out the ROM version later

Just a BANGER !

This soundtrack is a banger!

I am speechless at how they could make a game like this in this short amount of time. The only bad thing is that the frame rate drops when there are two man objects at the same time

The game is nice and the music is really cool but I played it in the browser and I think there are some issues: at some point I stopped taking damage from enemies and could only be damaged by falling in the holes on the ground, and there were some very noticeable slow down.

Really really good game, what an epic submission! The music is top notch, and the gameplay just hard enough! Almost beat the dragon boss, going to download the ROM to play on my GB. The progression of the levels tells a great travelling story - really enjoyed it!